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Serbian Police, Albanian Separatists And NATO Troops Vie For Space Along Border
by Jeremy Lennard
MUHOVAC, Yugoslavia (AFP) - With the ochre hills of the Presevo valley stretching away behind them, two U.S. Apache helicopter gunships hover in an azure winter sky over an administrative border post between Serbia and Kosovo.
On the ground, the checkpoint bristles with Russian and U.S. troops. Lookouts perched on top of armored cars scan the area with binoculars while heavily armed border guards check vehicles crossing to and from Kosovo and the buffer zone which stretches three miles (five kilometers) into Serbia.
The NATO peacekeeping force KFOR has promised to step up security in the area after ethnic Albanian separatists, in fighting which erupted inside the buffer zone nearly two weeks ago, killed three Serbian policemen.
Less than a kilometer (0.6 miles) inside the buffer zone, another checkpoint looms outside a crumbling farmhouse in the village of Muhovac, manned this time by members of the Albanian Liberation Army of Presevo, Medvedja and Bujanovac (UCPMB).
A boy who would not give his age, but he looks no older than 15, helps a grandfatherly colleague filter the passing vehicles. Both are in full combat fatigues and both uniforms have badges portraying the Albanian insignia - a double-headed black eagle on a red background.
The rebels are well armed with mortars and a rocket-propelled grenade launcher lined up alongside semi-automatic rifles inside the farmhouse courtyard.
"The situation is tense," local commander Muhamet Xhemaili said Sunday.
Only 300 meters (yards) separate some of the UCPMB positions from those of the Serbian police, he added.
The buffer zone was set up last year under an accord between Yugoslavia and NATO which makes a three-mile strip of southern Serbia along the demarcation line with Kosovo a no-go area for Yugoslavian and NATO security forces, with the exception of lightly armed Serbian policemen.
But the power vacuum in the hilly and wooded border zone has allowed the separatists to set up bases just out of reach of the Serbian security forces.
An indefinite ceasefire was agreed between Belgrade and the UCPMB last Monday after the three Serbian policemen were killed, but the separatists already accuse Serbia of violating the agreement.
"Even during the ceasefire they [Serbian police] have been attacking with silenced weapons," Xhemaili said. "Three days ago they injured two Albanians from this village."
They are "advancing to fill areas we have withdrawn from under the ceasefire terms," he added.
While he speaks, a steady flow of Albanian fighters, young and old, come through the commander's office inside the farmhouse, stopping for a cigarette and a shot of coffee.
Some wearing UCPMB badges, others sporting the logo of the officially disbanded Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) which fought for Kosovan independence from Yugoslavia before the NATO bombardments last year, they nod sternly as Xhemaili speaks.
The UCPMB does not want war but it wants the Serbs to pull back. The separatists call on the international community to provide political and if necessary military help to resolve the situation, he says.
The UCPMB first appeared at the funeral of two ethnic Albanian brothers allegedly killed by Serbian police in January, when it declared an independence struggle in the Presevo valley following what it claimed was Serbian intimidation of ethnic Albanians in the three southern Serbian towns from which the group takes its name.
The valley, like Kosovo, has a predominantly ethnic-Albanian population, but a significant Serbian population too. Its western edge falls into the buffer zone, but much of it, including the three principal towns are in areas under full Yugoslav control.
More than 4,500 ethnic Albanians have fled the buffer zone to Kosovo since trouble erupted in the area, the U.N. refugee agency UNHCR said last week.
The outbreak of violence in the buffer zone and an initially bristly response from Belgrade had raised fears of a severe clampdown by Yugoslavian forces and a return of fierce clashes between Serbs and ethnic Albanians.
With new Yugoslav President Vojislav Kostunica opting for a more restrained, negotiated response, that immediate fear has dispersed and the flow of those fleeing has reduced to a trickle.
But the calm that has descended is tense and uneasy, and could easily be shattered, according to the separatists.
"We are ready to respond if the Serbians move [further] forward," Xhemaili warned.
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